


Out of My Head

by SenkoWakimarin



Series: Let Them Eat Flesh [5]
Category: The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombies, Cannibalism, Dreams, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-29
Updated: 2018-11-29
Packaged: 2019-09-02 01:08:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16776598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SenkoWakimarin/pseuds/SenkoWakimarin
Summary: This is not how it happened.





	Out of My Head

This is not how this happened.

David, even starving, had been very tentative with touch. Curled together on the cot, blanket pulled up over them, David would curl around his back, always his back. He’d press his face against Frank’s spine, cold nose resting against the curve of his shoulder blade. Even his breath, when he’d exhale, was cool. At first that had freaked Frank out a little, the very obvious nature of David’s affliction, the differentness of him.

He’d eased into it. Even the first time, when it was purely practical, emotional connection almost entirely negligible, he’d found himself relaxing against David’s skinny chest, soothed into sleep by the slow, steady beat of his heart. They’d sleep that way, David curled around him, and Frank started to find a sort of peace in that, in the way David slowly warmed against him.

Sometimes he’d wake up with David’s mouth against his shoulder, teeth just resting against his flesh. It should have worried him, should have sent his skin crawling, made him leave. Danger, he recognized the danger inherently, and yet he’d just remained still. Started willingly sleeping with his shirt off, because skin-to-skin contact increased the effectiveness of the sharing of warmth. Still, he’d wake with David’s teeth pressed, gentle, to his skin, drool running warm as blood down his back.

This is not how this happened, but dreams are really just new twists on old moments, aren’t they?

Frank had liked it. Like the feeling of teeth on him, the threat implied. He’d liked the way David’s arms would, in his sleep, tighten around Frank. David didn’t seem bothered by pins and needles pain, so he’d fall asleep with one arm under Frank, the other draped over his waist. In his sleep, only ever in his sleep, his hands would spread, fine-boned and delicate, over Frank’s skin, warming against the flat planes of Frank’s torso.

David in his sleep was pliant and soft, all his angles and edges muted by exhaustion, by the heat shared between them. He was rarely the one to wake first, and when Frank would jerk up from some nightmare or another, he’d murmur soothing, gentle nonsense, easing Frank back onto the cot so they could finish out the night resting.

Frank rarely denied him that, especially as they started getting closer; David would sigh and roll out of bed and start the day at 4AM if Frank pulled away and stalked off, and they’d spend the rest of the day snarling at one another. David needed sleep the way Frank needed coffee, and Frank was willing to help him get it.

This is not how this happened, but maybe it would have been better if it had.

Even after they’d started doing more than just sleeping in that bed, David never slept facing him. David seemed to have some weird hang up about facing Frank when he was eating or sleeping, a thing that had lasted right up to the last day they’d spent together in that basement. It had struck Frank as kind of stupid at first, and slowly started to frustrate him as things developed between them.

It wasn’t a slight, he’d known that, always known, but still it had eaten at him. Like David felt he had to hide half of who he was, even when he saw Frank at his worst, at his weakest. Like David could see all of Frank, but had to hide himself for fear that Frank would leave.

He knows this is a dream because his arms are wrapped tightly around David when he wakes, just as David’s are around him. They hold each other so close, tangled up as they’re both warm in the softness of the bed (a real bed, familiar; home) hidden together under the sheets. David’s face is buried against Frank’s neck, his teeth resting over Frank’s pulse point.

“I could eat you alive,” David breathes, and the press of his lips against Frank’s neck makes Frank shiver. He turns fitfully in his sleep; in the dream he smooths a hand down David’s hair, feeling the tickle of his beard, smiling. He’s sleeping somewhere cold and lonely, he knows that in the way one might know something in a dream, but that has no bearing on the joy he feels to be here now.

To be warm.

To be held.

“I think I’d let you,” Frank says, and that’s not how this conversation happened. He hadn’t ever spoken those words; barely acknowledged David’s suggestion. But he’d been right, David had been right -- Frank would have. If there’d been nothing else left to him, no more punishment to mete out, he’d have been happy to give himself to David. All of himself, lay down his life for a good man.

Physically, in reality, he’s never been so miserable. The fever burns through him, scouring him. It seemed like he hurt in every way a man could hurt, his guts twisted, his very bones aching, his skin slick with sweat that threatened to freeze him. His head hurt, a worse migraine than any he’d suffered since the wound that had very nearly killed him with his family. He’d puked up, it seems, every damn thing he’s ever eaten, to the point that he can do no more than dry heave while his stomach tries to turn itself inside out.

In the dream, however, he’s comfortable. David holds him and his mouth tastes like blood rather than bile; blood that’s not his, blood that tastes of new chances, new beginnings, new life.

David says, “Can we keep this? Can we keep it now?”

“I don’t want to die,” Frank replies, and the truth of that shakes him. He doesn’t. Whatever living means, he wants to survive. Maybe out of spite, or maybe…

Arms tighten around him, and David stretches a little, arching in a way that pushes their bodies closer together. Light shines through the blankets that are pulled over their heads, diffused and soft, and Frank’s heart seizes in his chest, stuttering.

“So don’t,” David says, lifting his head. His eyes are gentle, his lips pale in a way that makes Frank want to kiss them back to life. He feels safe, here, safe in a way dreams usually aren’t.

They shift, somehow and David’s suddenly curving over Frank, on top of him, holding him as he kisses his face; lips, nose, brow, one two three, just as Maria had always done. “It’s time to get up, Frank,” he smiles, and Frank reaches up and hooks his hands around David, pulling him back down into the bed, tangling them back up.

“You’re warm,” is what he says, but what he means is, _I don’t want to leave this. I don’t want to lose it._

David laughs, and it’s a sweet sound, none of the bitterness that usually hides in it. None of the hurt or awkwardness. “It’s a dream, Frank. Just a dream.”

This is not how it happened.

When they parted, it was Frank who left, Frank who pulled out of David’s arms with careful insistence, leaving David asleep on a hotel bed as he pulled his boots on, grabbed his coat, and crept out of the room, past the kids sleeping in front of late-night commercials, refusing to look to see if Sarah was awake or asleep in the chair adjacent to them.

David had always held on. In the dream, David extracts himself, smiling, careful and kind but unstoppable; David rises from the bed and David disappears into the cold dark.

David leaves him, and the cold rushes in like the tide, so Frank’s eyes flash open in the dark and he shudders on the floor of the abandoned tenement room he’d broken into.


End file.
